1. Field of the Invention
The present application generally relates to computer software application configuration comparison and reuse and, more particularly, to upgrading, migrating and consolidation of business applications.
2. Background Description
Many businesses rely on business applications software to support core business processes, from financials and purchasing to inventory, production, and human resource management. Many of these applications grew out of Enterprise Resource Planning and are referred to as ERP systems, although they cover most business activities. The primary vendors of such business applications are SAP, Oracle (including recently acquired Peoplesoft, Siebel, and JD Edwards), and Lawson. The process of implementing these business applications is long and expensive and requires expertise both in industry specific business processes and in the business applications themselves. Some businesses are implementing packaged business applications for the first time, while other businesses have some business applications already implemented and are looking to consolidate, upgrade and extend these applications.
The present invention focuses on the businesses that are looking to consolidate multiple instances of a business application into a single instance, upgrade from and older version of the business application to a newer version, and extend their business application with additional functionality which might already be implemented into a different instance of the same business application. In order to achieve such consolidations, upgrades or extensions, businesses need to understand how their business applications were customized by comparing their instance of the business application with an unmodified instance, extracting the differences, analyzing them, and re-using only those differences that are needed. The main challenges in comparing instances of business applications and re-using parts of the business application include the following:                1. The complexity of the business application makes it very difficult to compare and analyze existing instances.        2. Most business applications require continuous access.        3. Extracting the useful parts of a business application and re-using them in a new instance of the business application is time consuming and requires expert knowledge.        
There are a number of tool vendors that address parts of the problem, but their focus is primarily on reporting on existing system configuration. These solutions can not handle the migration and consolidation of existing customizations, because they do not provide any support for comparing instances of business applications and re-using the important parts of the business application.